Day: April 26, 2006

(via Kotaku)
I haven’t paid for any of the available for-pay Oblivion mods (and don’t plan to buy or use them – I don’t need horse armor).Ã‚Â I have, however, read quite a bit about how the horse armor and Orrery mods come up, shall we say, a bit short in the value-for-your money department.Ã‚Â But the latest Bethesda provided for-pay mod – Wizard’s Tower – seems to be worth putting a bit of money down.

Man, I wanted this game to be awesome.Ã‚Â I really wanted to try it and like it.Ã‚Â But no single-player content means no RagManX playing it.

First, the write-up from Kotaku:

Love heavily instanced and overwhelmingly brown MMORPGs without enough content and require endlessly replaying the same dungeon over and over again until you jump a level from 2 to 3? Hey, who doesn’t? Nevertheless, early buzz on Turbine’s Dungeons and Dragons Online was so negative that you, like the majority of the planet’s sane, may have been reluctant to drop your hard earned lettuce on it.

Well, Turbine is trying to woo you over: if you’re a Yank and can find your way over to the DDO trial site, you too can have a seven day chance to discover the truth many of us only became privy to at the price of half a benjamin: Dungeons and Dragons Online is terrible. Period. Exclamation point. Radiation symbol! Still, it may be worth it so you can experience first hand DDO’s only saving grace: some pretty cool narration that is charmingly evocative of a real Dungeon Master’s cackling melodrama.

Please, Rest of the World, listen to us on this one: Tom Cruise may look tiny and cute like a Ken doll, but he is a gigantic, scary asshole. Please do not giggle and throw him parades. Thank you.

Now there.Ã‚Â Doesn’t that seem to have everything covered?Ã‚Â And check below – how often do you think you’ll find Bill Harris and Tom Cruise listed together in the tags for an article?
[tags]DubiousQuality, Bill Harris, Tom Cruise[/tags]

From the story, my understanding is that Best Buy and Geek Squad have been illegally using the Administrator’s Pak software for providing system recovery services to Best Buy customers.Ã‚Â After doing this illegally for a while, Best Buy approached Winternals Software about licensing the software.Ã‚Â After a few months of negotiations and free training at Best Buys’ corporate headquarters, Best Buy made the decision to not license the software.Ã‚Â Oddly, though, Best Buy and Geek Squad continued (and presumably continue) to use the software.Ã‚Â So, a lawsuit has now be filed.

As outlined in our Complaint and Motion for Temporary Restraining Order (which can be found, along with all other legal documents filed in the case, at http://www.winternals.com/legal/), Best Buy and Geek Squad initially contacted us and said that a license was needed to come into compliance. Rather than focus on the degree to which Best Buy and Geek Squad had previously engaged in the unauthorized copying and use of our products, we entered negotiations for a software license and to establish a long-term business relationship. To educate their employees on the software and facilitate these negotiations, we even held a training session at our expense on the Administrator’s Pak at their facilities in Minneapolis and offered an eminently reasonable software license for all Geek Squad employees. While surprised that they ultimately decided against a license, we were willing to go our separate way with the hope that they would someday change their mind.

However, after receiving information that Geek Squad employees continued to use ERD Commander frequently in repairing customers’ computers we decided to investigate the situation on our own.

As I’m catching up on a lot of missed web-surfing, I’m finding all kinds of cool things.Ã‚Â The latest neat gadget I want is an hourglass shaped clock.Ã‚Â It’s no better than a regular clock, just cooler (for values of cool defined by geeky me).Ã‚Â And it’s a steal at $36.95 plus shipping (free shipping on orders over $75).
[tags]Clock, hourglass clock[/tags]